Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!bcm!rice!sun-spots-request
From: hoelzle@neon.stanford.edu (Urs Hoelzle)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun
Subject: spurious "connect: Host is unreachable"
Keywords: Networks
Message-ID: <10306@brazos.Rice.edu>
Date: 26 Jul 90 18:49:01 GMT
Sender: root@rice.edu
Organization: Sun-Spots
Lines: 25
Approved: Sun-Spots@rice.edu
X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 270, message 10
Originator: spots@titan.rice.edu

On our network we see the following phenomenon: whenever a connection to a
remote host is built, the first connection attempt will fail, giving the
message "connect: Host is unreachable".  If retried within a couple of
minutes, it will always work.  This happens with mail, ftp, telnet, rlogin
etc.  The behavior is reproducible and is the same on all our machines
(Sun3/4s, SunOS 4.0.3, some diskless, one name/yp server).

Typical example:

otis> telnet next.com
Trying 129.18.1.2 ...
telnet: connect: Host is unreachable     <-- this msg comes w/no delay
telnet> quit
otis> !!
telnet next.com
Trying 129.18.1.2 ...
Connected to next.com.

Subsequent connects will work if made within a couple of minutes of a
successful connect.  What is happening here?  It seems that inetd (or
something else) times out too quickly during the connect, but why?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

-Urs